


Owl City Short Stories

by flowersbytheroad



Category: Owl City (Band)
Genre: Fantasy, Gen, Magic, Multiple Universes Colliding, Not Really Character Death, Real Life, Songfic, adam young - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-09
Updated: 2015-10-15
Packaged: 2018-03-11 06:47:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 7,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3317945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flowersbytheroad/pseuds/flowersbytheroad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of one shots based off Owl City songs. Just a bunch of easy, descriptive pieces that you can relax to with a pack of oreos and a mug of hot tea. Each chapter is inspired by one song and they're just really sweet, short and perfect for kicking back after a long day. Not a self insert, multiple song inspired situations. WIP.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Explorers

There was a kind of charm that came with an as-of-now indefinite life, of having been for so long but at the same time having been for no time at all. The sensation was difficult to explain and was only best represented in and of itself. Much like how time existed in sections of seconds and milliseconds but was still collectively, time, his life existed in a progression of fantastical and wondrously new moments that yet still coupled together to be one Existence, as though every breath was his first breath and every thought and movement and beat of his cold heart was just as amazing and new and bright as the first. It was a sensation that was completely innate and as confounding as it was spectacular. It wasn’t so much memory as it was a feeling that there was once a time that the expanse of the ocean and the boundless blue was not his, not that he occasioned long enough on this sensation to allow memory to come. There was a vague awareness of sinking, of darkness flitting at the corners of his vision and the water catching defiantly against his lungs and being forced through his veins. He remembered the uncomfortable coldness and the final welcomed numbing that spread from his fingers and toes to beat in time with his slowing heart and unblinking eyes. From his view, the surface of his new sky tossed and turned in its ephemeral state, as dark as it was crystal clear, diffusing and refracting the light into swirls and curls across his colourless skin, tracing the salty water that crept into his arteries which with his now silent heart, still roared in the way the ocean always did wherever it happened to be. There was a vague sensation as he stopped falling and allowed the darkness to close his still opened eyes. He slept with the rushing water in this blood and the memory of the fractured light in his silent mind. 

The next time consciousness came for him there was a slice of light cutting through the same unchanging and ever changing atmosphere. He took a desperate, deep breath and found the water filling him with a rush of comfort he didn’t understand why he needed. He blinked widely, stunned into temporary inaction, whether by panic or surprise, at the movement of the cold in and out of his chest until the sensation became familiar and as soon as it did, he lost the notion of it ever being otherwise. The raven haired boy waited and then flicked his raven tail slightly, rising a foot towards the surface and revelling at the way the light cut and drew patterns over his thin, blue and green tinged arms. Past his chest with its smooth scale like skin stretched over the outlines of his sharp ribs and lightening his pale blue eyes. Lilting through his webbed hands with its elongated fingers and the rows of sharp fins that lined his arms and tail and back where it looked as though the bone hand grew through the mesh of his skin. He fancied for a moment feeling the warmth that came with the flickering and snaking light. The creature now no longer man blinked again, making another flicking motion which brought him closer to the surface and as he neared the light, he unconsciously grinned. If it was panic or uncertainty he felt it was gone as quickly as the bubbles he exhaled. The grin became a breathy laugh only the darting silver fish above him heard. He looked up and with another instinctual flick was racing the bullet like shapes through the current, feeling the rush of the water through his hair and untiring lungs. In the vast expanse of blue, there was nothing but the unchanging liquid atmosphere around him as he sliced through the water like a hot knife through ice and he never looked back.


	2. Early Birdie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This one is about travelling, its about seeing a new place and having it take away your breath because it feels a lot bigger and more wonderful than you thought it would be

He sighed, watching his breath frost on the thin plane of glass that separated him from the zipping, blurring streaks of light that the street lamps painted in the after-images behind his eyelids. It was cold but the rough wool of his coat was enough to keep a majority of his long limbs warm. The still-boy rested his head against the frosted window and stared out at the rattling trail of cars that rushed past the too old shuttle bus, winding almost indefinitely into the distance in front of him and doing the same behind him until his gaze slid from the swish of passing road lines into darkness. Away in some distance, was a collection of sheer cliff drops that he didn’t think could get any deeper but did and, even further away was the dusting of lights and the indistinct glow of fluorescent that seemed to shimmer and wave like a mirage, one minute a million pinpricks of brightness like the stars had come down to touch the earth and somehow got caught in the web and tangle of interstates and another minute like a brush stroke swish of light made out of nothing but disappearing tail lights. He mused distantly, half asleep, trying to focus on the approaching skyline of his next great adventure. It loomed with the authority of a kindergarten teacher or a stern father with laughter and mystery brimming behind its reflective glass and mirror eyes. He felt the same sensation of trepidation and excitement deep in his gut, bubbling in a concoction of giddiness and dread. He absolutely couldn’t wait and was too prepared to wait for a million years.

Travelling alone had been something he got used to very easily, almost as easily as breathing and thinking and swallowing. The dull routine of packing and planning seemed to fit perfectly into his life before and he had held an almost tenacious obsession with maps. Maps that not only mapped the world but also mapped his dreams since he was a child. Dotted like constellations on his plaster wall were the remains of pins stuck into points that could have been lines that could have been journeys from nowhere to nowhere, across states and across oceans and sometimes across galaxies to an infinite other universes. He was obsessed with the idea of leaving the city, of seeing the living, breathing world that is so much more than the flat pages of books and posters. His parents had treated this with the same nuance as slightly confused but relatively supportive puppies and his younger brother had almost exceeded him in his excitement even though it would be many more years before he would even be allowed to walk to the corner shop alone. Just like that with his collection of maps he didn’t really need stuffed in his backpack and his collection of hopes and destinations he really did need stuffed in his mind, he had set off, trailing a breadcrumb trail of ambition and hope.

It wasn’t as if he had never had the dream before, it just happened sometimes. He had never found it strange enough to warrant any help, parental, medical or otherwise, a reoccurring dream was hardly worth mentioning, it was just that in the shuttle bus, in the faraway interstate, in the looming, luminous shadow of the new city, any dream could seem real and lucid.

It began with a strange sensation of lulling warmth, like how hot chocolate feels running down your throat on a cold day or how the sun hits your back in spring. He lay on the sandy ground that was quickly becoming a dessert that stretched, for miles and miles around him, from one distant horizon to the next. The sky was a blinding white light, a plane of perfect, crystal clear blue dotted by scooting clouds that seemed a lot closer and lower to the earth that he was sure that if he could reach his hand up, it will come away damp and soft. They casted shadows the size and shapes of foreign countries over him. The sense of peace that came with his lazy cloud watching bordered hypnotism, tracing the clean cut lines across the sky. To his indistinct right, there was the faint hint of wetness at his fingertips as a nameless, mysterious ocean lapped against his hand. He knew this because he could smell the salt in the air, the faint taste of brine and mystery that the sea carried with it everywhere. The rustle of the waves breaking and crashing seemed a lot bigger than the constant push of it against his fingers. He didn’t turn to look. He couldn’t and never did and yet it was perfectly comfortable and familiar. He could feel the warming sand seeping heat into his back and the blinding sun refracted by a million tiny prisms of sand and it was all perfect.

There was a jolt as he woke, not in shock but more in surprise as a man, the coach driver, who was stick thin with a large white moustache that seemed to be compensating for his balding head, tapped his shoulder with a roughness that was more gruff than annoyed and suggested, kindly, that he should get off now unless he planned to ride all the way back from where he came. Drowsy, confused and smelling like a mixture of peacefulness and stale coffee, the boy obliged, dragging his bag pack with him and in a few short moments, found himself standing, alone in the half rosy darkness in the shelter of the tiniest bus stop he had ever seen as his companion for the last approximate eight hours waved goodbye and set on his way, the tiny silver figure of his bus disappearing along a bend as the morning traffic began building up. Like a cat, he stretched the kinks out of his back, rubbing sleep from his eyes and tiredness from his bones. His bag lay, for the moment forgotten beside him and the boy sat under the dirty transparent roofing, watching as the sky got lighter and lighter and the sound of traffic got heavier and heavier.

It was just one of those dreams that city boys had, when they hadn’t ever left before and finally found out that they could and in that respect, the ocean had not changed much since man had discovered how to make boats. It had taken months to save up, almost a full year and a half before the rolls of socks in his drawer stuffed with bills and coins had finally spelt: enough and when it did, he had left the very next day. Now, sitting alone at the edge of the highway, sleep deprived and neck aching, he got his first, tantalizing glimpse of the sea.

His first thought was that it was blue and it surprised him because it looked like just the blue grey green that his travel journals had said it would be. What they didn’t mention was the restlessness of it, the way it never stayed the same for even a moment gave him the impression that if he looked away, it would do something ridiculously exciting. The pale light of the morning stained it white and misty and in the distance, the black shadows of ships were slowly making their way back to the harbour, laborious and deliberate. He blinked when the lights of the city went off one by one as seven o’clock ticked by and he hadn’t realized how light it had gotten and how much warmer it now seemed. 

The cliff the small bus stop sat on was a sheer drop for about fifty feet leading to more roads underneath him criss-crossing one another until they intertwined and stretched to the more densely packed, neat little subdivisions and friendly looking neighbourhoods before finally reaching the dotted line of the few hotels and resorts stretching along the coast line up till the collection of rocks and hills where the sand transitioned to stone, shifting out lazily into the long, white beaches dotted with its coloured specks and moving figures in the slowly ascending white sun and, finally, the ocean, lapping almost obediently against the coast like it was being tame for the sake of the tourists.

He exhaled a breath he didn't know he had been holding and embraced the sultry, salty and still chilly ocean breeze as it blew his way, as heady and foreign as he had imagined it and for once, he took his time leaning over the railing to soak in the atmosphere of this new frontier, bright and inviting and foreign. He smiled; an expression he had been using more and more consistently as his trip had brought him closer and closer to the west coast. The wind ruffled his bed hair and made the excitement settling in the pit of his stomach jump but he still remained, determined to take as long as he could savouring the awaited meeting with an admittedly naïve notion of wanting to keep this first acquaintance between them private.


	3. Dear Vienna

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A story of a girl finding herself somewhere unexpected as well. A companion piece to Early Birdie (part 2/3 I think). Enjoy!

It was strange, how the first place she had found herself was the ocean. A different city and a different time, but the same ocean. She had seen the rolling white waves from the window of the cab taking her to the city and had wound down the window and stuck her head out, despite the half-hearted warning of oncoming cars. She smiled and laughed, wind whipping through her bright ginger hair and she smoothed it down to keep it from getting in the way of her view. The cab drove easily through the slowly thickening traffic and she laughed with the low flying seagulls. Soon though, the short-lived moment of joy stopped as the taxi finally hit the build-up of cars. She craned her neck out, still entranced with the prospect of such a new environment that the only thing that drew her away from the grid like transition of houses to the sea was the lone figure of a boy leaning eagerly over the edge of the highway, dark hair mussed like hers from the warm breeze and a wide grin plastered on his prematurely aged features. She noted his jacket and backpack and the wild, excited expression of his face, he had eyes only for the scene before him and she decided right then, that she liked him.  
It wasn’t as though she had planned to go on such a long trip across the Atlantic but, she had argued, wanderlust was in her blood. And it was true. It was just that America happened to be conveniently far away. Before her, her mother had travelled to every continent in the world, including both the poles, and before that, her grandmother had spent years wandering Europe as a journalist and a war relief nurse. Generations of women in her family line had spent some time or another finding themselves and dashing after the passion that kept them moving. And now she was determined that it was her turn. Her mother had warned her, told her that she would fall In love with the moving because it always felt like chasing something just out of reach and her grandmother had told her that too many years of hers were spent on something that you didn’t need to cross oceans to find and she had, just as they had, took the advice with a grain of salt and threw them to the wind.   
As a child, she had kept a journal made out of scraps of everything she had ever thought was interesting. As she grew older, the book had been serialized from one cheap paperback to sketchbooks the size of paving stone slabs and tiny pocket notebooks the size of chocolate bars. Writing was like an obsession and she was neither good nor consistent at it but rather the books were a mess and jumble of spewed thoughts and scattered ambitions. She had always held a strong belief that each person had an obsession that carried no rhyme or reason and this had been hers and she had nurtured it religiously. Each book was marked contentiously with a number in black ink and each had a place in the piles of boxes that decorated her attic back home. A journal entry, had read, almost eight years old now, as follows:

12th February   
Today Aunt Jean came back from Russia with some dolls. She said they were Russian but they’re just those nesting dolls. Nothing special but what was special was this receipt (see below) that I found in the bag. Did the math with Daddy’s help and did you know that a can of beer and a packet of crisps cost only half a much in Russia than in London?? I wonder if its all like that. Anyway, we found twelve guppies in the pond today.

It also wasn’t as though she had decided to leave on a whim because these things took planning. It had really begun with her mother sending her a postcard from, as she had phrased, an exotic Asian getaway to go trekking in northern India. She had been five at the time and the glossy, hard piece of paper was a treasure that warranted its own special box and from that moment forth, she knew she too would one day go to India and ride elephants or cross the blistering Egyptian desserts on the backs of camels or sail, bravely mind, across the seven seas in search of treasure. Well. At the very least she should be allowed to visit the corner shop on her own.   
Her father, who came from a family of tax accountants patiently told her that these things needed time and she still had plenty of time to sail the world or buy her corner store candy in the future. And like the tenacious little girl she was, she waited. And waited. She took day trips to the beach and weekend trips to the city that turned to week long trips in her Honda civic and a carrier bag full of clothes and money, up and down the length of the UK. Her entire life seemed to revolve around leaving from her sparsely furnished house to her overly cluttered desk at the school. From the way she only ever bought take away coffee to her habits of preferring to keep liquid cash than to bank. And one day when the weather was particularly sweet and her classes especially empty as more and more of the tiny kindergarten children had begged to be allowed outside to play, she decided that she would leave. Immediately.   
Of course there were some complications that stopped her from catching a flight for anywhere at all and kissing her tiny house and her tiny life goodbye but as true to her word as she could be, in less than a week, she had abandoned her teaching job in her small home town in the suburbs of Scotland, and packed her bags and the little she owned, bid her family farewell and to look out for a postcard, and boarded the first plane to the States.   
Her first impression of America had been that it wasn’t all that different from any big city. Her accent had always painted her as a foreigner so it was no different here. The people had been friendly if not overbearing based on the one taxi that she had got on almost immediately after touching down. It was night then and the flashing lights were dazzling little spheres of gold dust against the frosty window. Shuttle busses and trailers trudged past them like an array of senior citizens as she plastered her forehead against the cold glass, falling into the lull of silence between the cab driver’s good natured questions and her own excited answers. The world was dark and it was mysterious and stirring and she had an urge to rush into this great, dark pool of potential and disturb it with her waves of discovery. The tiredness of her trip couldn’t touch her and in two hours along with a hefty sum of money on the meter, the sky had begun to lighten from the first tinge of cold white in the distance, framing the jagged shapes of the city to a soft, almost pastel blue dusting the still cold sky. The steady 105 mph made the landscape rush by them in the soft lulling way that which it appeared and, unable to control herself, she rolled the windows down all the way, letting in a shock of bracing cold air and she smiled. A wide, toothy grin that spread almost obscenely from ear to ear in its joy. All it had taken was her whole life and a plane ride to get her here.


	4. Early Vienna

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When the unexpectedly travelling boy met the unexpectedly travelling girl. (3/3)

He heard an accented voice yell from somewhere behind him but didn’t think it was addressed to him until he turned around at the second call, tearing his eyes away from the picturesque scene below the outcropping. From the long line of traffic that had built up without his noticing, a girl had leaned out of a cab, supported on her elbows, her whole upper torso was balanced dangerously outside the car and susceptible to any careless oncoming vehicles. He blinked, confused. She smiled in return and it was the kind of smile that seemed too big for her face, flashing him a collection of (surely artificially) straightened white teeth, her long, straight, auburn hair that seemed to lean a little more to the orange spectrum of things stirred in the breeze.  
"Do I see a fellow traveler?" she called casually from her position. He remained speechless for a while, mainly due to the surprise of being addressed so nonchalantly in a situation that was so unlikely it took him a moment to look past her bright red hair and challenging green eyes.  
"...Yeah!" he called back after a pause he was all too sure she had noticed “Uh…welcome to Seattle I guess?” he said back hesitantly “It’s pretty,” he added, completely unnecessarily as he later noted.  
She grinned wider “Yeah it is,” she scanned the landscape again, exhilarated. A minute passed, “You know-“  
“So, does that mean you’re Scottish by the way?”  
He kicked himself again for not interrupting her..  
"What was the accent too big a giveaway?" he gathered she was teasing "or was it the red hair?"  
He took his time shouting back again "maybe both?" he called, half a hesitant smile now playing on his features.  
At that moment, traffic decided to finally give way and her taxi began to roll away. She had laughed, and craned herself out a little more, grinning "I’ll see you down there then!" she yelled as distance made her softer. He jogged a few steps to keep up but stopped short of the oncoming cars "yeah! Definitely!" he shouted back but her cab had already disappeared among the sea of vehicles. The brunet took a deep breath and exhaled it, turning away, after a few moments of watching the disappearing taxi to the view below him. He would need to remember that bright red hair.


	5. Meteor Shower

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (A/N: Okay I'm pretty proud of this one. Play the song while reading it, like the minute the song starts playing even the first 5 seconds of silence, just start reading. I wrote it so that it should coordinate with the music.)
> 
> A story about someone feeling really small in the wake of something amazing a(nd magical and huge.

He stared out into the sky, a deep, burnished blue scattered with its infinity stars almost as if it were holding its breath. 

A streak of light left stardust in its path.

He scrambled for the brass telescope, hunched over and jammed the piece almost painfully into his face with a desperation that spoke volumes. He gripped the cool metal, disbelieving, cold and excited.

Another brush stroke of light across the navy blue.

His breath caught in a mixture of amazement and relief as the breeze ruffled his hair in congratulations. He forgot the bone freezing chill and the uncomfortable position of his hunched-over back.

One by one the lights changed from the countable to the uncountable

It had taken him an age, a whole age of loss but here he was and he was so small and so insignificant in the wake of it all.

The sky was scattered, thrown with a million pinpricks of falling light. An infinity of points that led into streaks and then nothingness, so fast he almost couldn’t catch them if there weren’t so many. The air he breathed felt charged, energized and almost magical.

He looked away from the telescope because he didn’t need it anymore. The lights were around him, alive, still falling. He swallowed a lump in his throat because it was a moment of being utterly and completely overwhelmed by warmth.


	6. Paper Tigers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A story about someone who ran away somewhere with dread at his heels.

He sighed, half in resignation, half tiredly. The second hand on his wall clock was ticking nonchalantly in a permanent spot caught between 9:45 and 9:46 as the little digitized numbers on his phone screen shone 3:20 in the morning. He had left his lights on in his room because he liked how glaringly bright it was and if he had bothered to pull his curtains shut and ignored the dizziness behind his eyes, it could have been the middle of the day. He could just about imagine rays of dusty sunlight dappling the curtains instead of the lulling, heady summer darkness outside. This was the kind of dark that wasn’t so much a presence as it was an absence of light, just enough of it gone for it to be dark. Instead of the orange stained black, the night was a deep midnight blue, scattered with a handful of stars, not enough to make constellations, and the moon hung low and yellow and crescent. Looking at it too long was almost hypnotic as if there was a kind of beast smiling its sickle like smile down at him, making him shudder. He could smell something sweet in the air, a mixture of jasmine and orange and the scent rolled in mild, almost-not-there waves through the room.   
The fan was on and spinning fast, wafting the hot air around the room at a higher velocity and no lower temperature. He was pointedly aware of the thin film of sweat and condensation from the humid summer night that had settled over him and hung like a cloud as he stared up at the criss-crossing lines mapping his ceiling. God. If only it wasn’t so hot. It felt like the walls were sweating.  
He couldn’t recall the last time he had felt so helpless. It was as though someone had metaphorically glued cinder blocks to his arms and legs. Glued being the preferred word as tied implied that there was some way to free him from his bonds. There was no way to free him from these bonds without taking a considerable amount of skin off him as well. The brunette sighed again and turned so his back could have a go at the blowing from the fan. It was strange because despite the suffocating heat, his veins were filled with a frigid dread like ice water, sending shivers up and down his spine. Boxes were stacked in corners and around him, a part of the city he had brought with him to this quiet place and they towered and teetered precariously with the same semblance of the city. He quietly counted 24 in his head to the ticking of the wall clock which had, so far, been the only thing he had unpacked. He felt it was strangely symbolic in some weird way.  
In the dizzying heat of the summer, in the time of night that wasn’t quite morning yet, when it’s easiest to admit things out loud and to mean less of what you say and say less of what you mean, the man exhaled for a third time and, eyes moving to stare blankly out the window into the deep blue void silhouetted with rows of houses and trees, his voice rasped like the hissing of moths caught in fly zappers   
“Why do I feel so alone?”   
His tone was laced with incredulity and disbelief, unhappy and miserable in the sense of someone who couldn’t quite believe why or how he had ended up where he was. It was an admission but not a confession. He could have sounded angry, or maybe just resigned. To himself, he sounded tired. Just as well, the bright yellow light of his room coming from a bulb that was only a lampshade away from being a bare wired light hanging from the ceiling, flickered off for a brief second as if stuttering its agreement before blinking blearily back on. In the temporary whoosh and stutter of darkness, he felt an expected but still hurtful crushing in his chest.   
Imagine a cube of ice being dropped into a cup of lukewarm water. The cracks and fault lines that appear the second the ice is submerged is the easiest way where which he could describe the sensation. It was sudden, loud, and explosive even, a lot more painful and violent than it looked. At least that’s what he thought. If there was some kind of light at the end of this perverse hole of misfortune, well, it was probably the headlights of an oncoming freight train.


	7. Up All Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A story about the forest, and nature, and love

The muggy forest air was as intoxicating as it was refreshing, waking him up with its nutty, rotting aroma and heavy mist. Sunlight flitted through the high treetops, leaving bright gold dapples on dark green leaves and rotting undergrowth as the crunch and drag of his thickly soled boots left tell-tale signs through the well trekked paths. He kept moving past the gently gurgling stream with its whispered secrets and a den of foxes burrowed deep into a crevice of a world that was both teeming with life and holding its breath.   
He wandered, aimless and exhilarated. A slight chill had begun to settle and the mossy ground had begun to sport a coat of red-orange maple leaves. He felt the gentle, powerful slope of the mountain, the warmth of the sun kissing the back of his neck and he could tell it was a promise, guiding him through the trees and routes to somewhere only they knew.  
Gradually, painstakingly slowly, the flecks of light on the leaves had begun to slant, crawling up bark and stem as the sun sunk its way west and the man looked, maybe surprised, in the direction, pausing for a moment towards the burning amber that washed the sky in gold. In that moment the world seemed to grow unimaginably silent, alight with a slow lulling warmth that promised nothing but endless sweet breezes and winking lights in the sky.   
As he finally turned back to the track he now lost with the light, the moment seemed to pass and the sun’s set was like a gentle, lovely sigh as the world returned to life.   
At first, there was nothing. This was the kind of darkness that was so complete that it made no difference if his eyes were opened or closed. He could hear the high whistle of the cicadas and crickets and saw the distant glimmer and wink of light from stars watching him through what few holes were there in the canopy. His path was lit by the pale, artificial white light coming from an LED torch and slowly, that too began to die. He stopped walking as it did, plunged into something that wasn’t quite panic as it was anticipation. Something that was in the air and told him that he was where he needed to be and to stay still. And that he should really, really pay attention.   
It was a flicker of something in the corner of his eye that told him she was there, this was the kind of flicker that was not so much a movement of a hand than it was a turn of lips or the rustle of a skirt. How he knew she was waiting or that she was even a she escaped him. He turned but there was no one there to accompany the scent of cedar wood smoke that grew stronger as he waited. He felt her in the warm, pleasant prickle in his skin and the whisper of the forest wind down his back like the loving breath of a lady.  
And as if it were possible, the night grew darker still and the summer constellations glittering through the heavy canopy began their journey through a sky that was more navy than black.   
And Through all this, he saw the slightest, smallest suggestion of light.   
It was a display, he felt that even the grandest orchestra in the world could never have done justice to and it happened in complete and utter silence. The lights, he remembered, were the dancing of fireflies in the air or the spring of sparkles from fireworks and the dance of a flame from a campfire. Small but in the pitch black of the forest each fleck of floating brightness was a hanging sun that was small enough to flit behind a leaf and stain the world shades of green, pink and white. As far as he knew, it could have been midday in the high heat of July. The pinpricks of light danced across the pale exposed skin on his forearms and he imagined them waltzing to some imaginary music only they could hear. It was as if the luminous dust motes were falling and twirling in some kind of otherworldly foxtrot he couldn’t quite see the choreography of.   
Hypnotized and breathless, he followed the trails of brightness and powder for what could have been hours or merely seconds to somewhere that was either a million miles away of right where he stood.   
There she was.   
Like a fairy tale incarnate or the glittering of stardust in the Milky Way, she trailed light like a butterfly trails coloured powder and she was beautiful like no woman was ever or would ever be beautiful. He didn’t stare but his smile said everything as he took a hesitant step towards her. She stopped in her ethereal dance to look back at him. Try as he might, he could not recall how she looked but he knew he had stared long into her bright, teasing and young eyes and that she had been smiling, something wide, excited and so brutally honest that he had felt himself come to the realization that he was suddenly, completely and utterly in love, all in one single instant.   
This was the kind of love that reminded him of astronauts looking down on the small, blue planet Earth from a million miles up in the sky. It felt as though someone had pushed him backwards, suddenly and without warning, into a swimming pool and he had discovered, to his delight, that he could breathe underwater. He found himself feeling stunned, finding joy at being alive and of being nowhere else but there and no time else but now.   
He blinked his startled gaze at her and he saw she was the green glow of a fox’s eyes on midsummer night and the sparks of embers that jump from a burning log and the very same golden sun dappled leaves of the day. She smelled of warmth and of the rich rotting undergrowth and bonfire smoke. They were mere inches apart but neither moved to touch the other. Neither of them needed to. She stared back with eyes that held daydreams and cloud castles in them and her lips parted ever so slightly as if to whisper a secret. Her breath was the summer breeze and the heavy, damp night air and he swore she had said something of incredible importance if only he could remember now. And he had wanted to give her his word, shout it and proclaim it from mountaintops. He leaned in, promises and wishes hanging from his lips, suspended in an almost tangible atmosphere of sheer amazement and awe.  
A bubble had burst or a second hand had ticked or a butterfly had beat its wings and the moment was broken.   
And she was suddenly nothing more than the sprinkling and dusting of fireflies in his path. The lights he was so sure that had twirled and swirled around him had gone and as if waking from the deepest sleep, he the sensation of being rested, quiet and with the strangest sensation that something otherworldly had occurred. If only he could remember the colour of someone’s eyes or the turn of that person’s smile and white teeth, he just knew, with every fibre of his being that he would remember everything.   
It was the kind of dream that would make him long and pine for days, for someone who was never real but in his head. And yet there he was, standing knee deep in nostalgia with dew clinging to his eyelashes and gold dust on his shoulders and the memory of a whisper…or a laugh…or a sigh, so soft and tender it couldn’t have been anything but the rich summer air and the high singing of cicadas in the dark.


	8. Take Me Somewhere Nice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> About going home and missing home and the new year

The airport was full to the brim with people coming and going, with worried white knuckles and long relieved sighs; with high pitched laughter and dashing, running footsteps. He lay curled, almost motionless on the hard plastic seats, occupying two of the uncomfortable chairs and wished he had taken more of them. Eyes closed, legs tucked in awkwardly and his luggage tied to his wrist, the man slept with all the semblance of a child, exhausted and spent. It had been a long day, a long week, a long year, and as the digitized numbers on his watch slowly ticked down to zero, he unknowingly slept away the minutes bringing him closer and closer to the New Year. With a jolt, and a timely but violent buzz from his pocket, the man stirred and rolled over, toppling his bag in the process as he tugged the string connecting them, causing a loud clatter that made his cheeks burn and gave him no other option but to sit up in his seat, awkwardly straightening himself amidst the moderately crowded airport on the last day of the year. He placed his bag between his legs and yawned, rubbing sleep from his eyes and the ache from his back. It was a nice, warm night from where he was in South America and it would be much colder where he was headed. Paris. With its frosty lights and stolen kisses that would bring him that much closer to her again. Minutes ticked by and his heart fluttered against his ribcage for a moment. Oh how he missed her so, it almost caused him physical pain to think that it would still be hours more before they could meet. There was an entire Atlantic ocean separating them and he had been gone, been away for so long that the prospect of meeting her again felt almost impossible.   
Just last month he had sent her a postcard. “I’m coming home” it read “Wait for me please” He had signed off unable to decide between ‘I love you’ and ‘I miss you’. In the end he settled with ‘wish I was there with you’ and had watched as boats rowed their way along the blue green quiet of the lake. When he sent it, he had been in Canada, a day later he had found himself in Bolivia and now he was ready to go home again.   
Unknowingly, the minutes had ticked down to twelve and a collective exhale seemed to pass through the airport. No one cheered, no one stood or sat or gave any indication that the New Year was here other than in a few small smiles and intertwining fingers. An airport, after all, was the perfect place to celebrate the turn of the times, a place that saw comings and goings as often as it did. He barely noticed the subtle shift of the year, the new shrugging the old off its tired shoulders to reveal something tender and young. He was too busy now making his way down clinically lit corridors and glass rooms where more and more people waited and waited.  
The departure flight sign glowed a polite orange over a stewardess who looked too tired to be saying ‘have-a-nice-flight’s to passengers. His ticket was handed back to him and in no time at all he had seated himself by a nicely shaped porthole showing the streaks of lights of planes coming and going and a deep black sky that boasted a scattering of stars and a huge, orange harvest moon from being so far from the city. It was a lovely night, still and balmy and full of the promises of home. He hoped that she would wait for him, that she had been patient in his absence and would love him like he had never left. He knew he was ready to do so for her. He would cross continents for her.   
The man sighed and leaned back into his seat as the craft hummed to life around him, going into taxi and eventually take off. He imagined the gentle vibrations were the breathing of a huge terrifying creature. He vaguely registered someone coming to sit beside him and their elbows brushed briefly. As the plane rose he felt his heart drop to his stomach as inertia, for the moment, made him float like a cloud and in a brief second, he was lighter than air.


	9. On The Wing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> About flying, the rush and the breathlessness of it. Tired limbs, tearing eyes and water droplets in your hair left by the clouds.

Very carefully, he took a running start and leapt off the fifty story building with a scream building in his throat, bubbling out into the air as he tumbled, ungracefully, off the structure. Tawny feathers flew by him as he flapped haphazardly and with each down stroke, he felt himself slow slightly. Another flap, straightening out now, he could do this. Flying felt very much like riding a bicycle. Either you got it or you didn’t. And when he did finally get it, he was a mere hundred feet from the ground. He flapped down hard, pushing himself off with a gust of air. And once he got it, the fear turned very quickly into exhilaration. He laughed. A high, light headed thrill of excitement as he carved the wind and climbed higher, barely clipping the edge of a skyscraper as he did so. The air was colder up here, even though it was closer to the sun and he felt the light kissing off the primaries of his wings. 

He didn’t think there was anything more exciting than this. This must have been what a million people had felt before him, standing at the very edge of a precipice and looking down, had felt the urge to drop. It must have been what the wright brothers wanted to do with their flying machines, what Da Vinci wanted. If only they knew the secret to it, it was the easiest thing in the world.

He was well above the city now and savouring the feel of the wind biting against his skin. It was cold and unsurprisingly damp. He'd need to bring a jacket with him next time, and maybe goggles so he could see the blurry mess of the cityscape under him. He felt he could go anywhere, see anything and yet with the infinite world stretching out for miles and miles before him, he landed on the edge of the city, in the park that bordered the metropolis but was barren now and dead with an inch of snow crunching beneath his feet.

He could leave at any time. Any time and see anything in this huge, glorious world.

It turns out people need more than wings to get free.


End file.
